Letter XXIII. To Atto, Bishop of Troves

(Circa A.D. 1128.)

Bishop At to Jiad, in a sickness which lie believed mortal, distributed all his goods to the poor. When he was restored to health, Bernard writes to console him, and praises what he had done.¹

To a poor Bishop, a poor abbot, wishes health and that he may attain the reward of poverty, which is the kingdom of heaven.

1. I should praise you, and rightly, did not that saying-restrain me, Praise no man before his death (Ecclus. xi. 28). It is certain that you have done a thing worthy of praise: but the praise is to be ascribed to Him, from whom you have received both to will and to do what is praise worthy. We glorify God, therefore, by you and working in you; who also has willed to be glorified in you, only that He may render you glorious also. Who, since He is glorious in His Majesty, deigns to appear glorious in His Saints also, that He may not have glory alone. For although He Himself is sufficient unto Himself in an infinity of glory, yet He seeks glory also in His Saints, not that His own may be increased, but that He may partake it with them. For He knows them that are His: but we do not easily know them except He shall deign to reveal them to us.² know, indeed, of what kind of men it was written: They are not in the trouble of men, and shall not be plagued Kith men (Ps. Ixxiii. 5). I know without doubt that those words do not concern you. I know also that it is written again, Whom the Lord loveth He chaste net li, and sconrgeth every son whom He receiveth (Prov. iii. 12, and Hebrews xii. 6), and when I see you stricken and thereby amended, can 1 infer anything else than that you are of the number of His children? I do not wish for a clearer proof that He has corrected you than your very poverty itself. A noble title is that of poverty, which God Himself commands by the mouth of the Prophet, saying, / am a man who sees my poverty (Lam. iii. I, VULG.).1 This title ennobles you more, and renders you more illustrious, than all the treasures of the kings of the earth.

2. I know that I have set down out of Scripture just now that a man is not to be praised during his life. But how can I refrain from the praise of him who no longer runs after gold, and who disdains to put his confidence in the treasures of the world? Of such a man Scripture thus speaks: Who is lie and we 10 ill call him blessed? For he has done wonderful things in his life (Ecclus. xxxi. 8,9). Perhaps man, indeed, is not to be praised during his life, inasmuch as it is a struggle upon the earth; yet ought he not to be praised when he is dead unto sin and lives unto God? That praise is indeed vain and seductive which is addressed to a sinner in his passions; whosoever calls him happy leads him into error, but will not the life of him who is able to say, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal. ii. 20) be praiseworthy and much to be commended? When, then, a man is praised in whom not himself, but Christ, lives, he is praised, not in his own life, but in the life of Christ, and because of this he is not praised against the Scripture which forbids a man to be praised in his life.

Why, then, shall he not be worthy of my praises of whom God deigns to accept the praises to His Name? As David says, the poor and needy shall give praise unto Thy Name (Ps. Ixxiv. 21).

3. Job is praised because he bore the loss of his goods patiently, and shall a Bishop not be praised who has both parted with them of his own accord, and distributed them liberally? He has not waited until death came, when he would have it in his power neither to give nor to retain anything: which many do, whose testament has no force until they have ceased to live, but while still placed between the hope of life and fear of death, it was then that in life, and with goodwill, he shared his goods among the poor, that his righteousness might remain for ever and ever (Ps. cxii. 9). Would the money itself have remained similarly for ever and ever? Good is the recompense of righteousness for money when in exchange for that which could not be held fast. A price is given which remains happily for ever, for righteousness is incomparably better than money, because the one enriches and fills only the chest, but the other the soul. Then the priests of God are clothed with righteousness, and thus far more richly and becomingly than in robes of gold or silk.

4. But render thanks to God who has inspired in you a glorious contempt of the transitory glory belonging to these things, and at the same time stricken you with a salutary fear of the peril to your soul. O, wonderful goodness of God towards you! He has made you have trial of death so that you might not die; and made you fear it, to preserve you from its stroke. This He has done, so that your goods might not be dearer to you than yourself. A devouring fear was raging in the very marrow of your bones, and hindering the relief of perspiration, the disease grew graver day by day. And now the limbs without grow cold, while within burned a devouring fire which wasted the viscera, already exhausted by long deprivation of nourishment. Speedily the pale and doleful image of death was before your eyes. But behold a voice, as it were from heaven, was heard: / am He ilw destroys (not thee, but) thy iniquities (Is. xliii. 25); and speedily when the priest of God had distributed all his goods to the poor, that as a poor man he might die, suddenly the sweat long unhoped-for burst forth from all its fountains; health came back equally both to body and soul, and clearly showed that what God promises in Scripture had been fulfilled in you: I kill and I make al he; I wound and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver out of My hand (Deut. xxxii. 39). He has stricken the flesh to save the soul; He has slain avarice that you might live unto righteousness. Now that you are restored to life and health, we hope that none will be able to snatch you from the hands of God, provided that you do not lose sight of that counsel in the Gospel: Behold thoit art made whole; sin no more lest a icorsc tiling come unto thee (S. John v. 14). And if thy kind Father forewarns thee of this, it is because He does not desire it to happen; because he willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live. And rightly. For what advantage would there be in the death of a sinner? The grave will not confess God, nor will death praise Him; but you who are living, do you bless the Lord and say: I shall not die, but IQ³ LETTKK XXIII.

live and declare the works of the Lord; thou hast thrust sore at »ie that I migh t fall, but the Lord helped me (Ps.. cxviii. 17, 13).

Footnotes

1. Hato, or Atto, is thought to have been a Cluniac monk. But this was apparently not so. He seems to have lived long after the incident here referred to, and died at length at Cluny in A.D. 1 145. ↩

2. The A.V. more literally, affliction. S. Bernard enlarges on this subject in Ser. 2 de Ccena Domini. — [E.] ↩

3. Otherwise, spiritual. ↩